World

From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity's creation and evolution that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us....

Bill Bryson has been an enormously popular author both for his travel books and for his books on the English language. Now, this beloved comic genius turns his attention to science...

The definitive English-language biography of Simón Bolívar, the, "George Washington of South America," who remains strangely unknown in the United States....

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history....

Yuval Noah Harari returns with an original, compelling, and provocative book, turning his focus toward humanity's future and our quest to upgrade humans into gods....

Battle: The Story of the Bulge, John Toland's first work of military history, recounts the saga of beleaguered American troops as they resisted Hitler's deadly counter offensive....

The Deluge is a chilling work of great originality that will fundamentally change how we view the legacy of World War I....

Meriwether Lewis and his partner, William Clark, endured incredible hardships and witnessed astounding sights on their 1803 cross-country trip to unexplored West....

When Autobiography of a Yogi first appeared in 1946, it was acclaimed as a landmark work in its field....

The Mongol army led by Genghis Khan subjugated more lands and people in 25 years than the Romans did in 400....

Why did humans abandon hunting and gathering for sedentary communities dependent on livestock and cereal grains and governed by precursors of today's states? Find out....

For millennia the location of the Nile River’s headwaters was shrouded in mystery. In the 19th century, there was  a frenzy of interest in ancient Egypt. At the same time, European powers sent off waves of explorations intended to map the unknown corners of the globe....

From his perspective in Renaissance Italy, Machiavelli's aim in this classic work was to resolve conflict with the ruling prince, Lorenzo de Medici....

The eagerly awaited return of master American storyteller Rinker Buck, Life on the Mississippi is an epic, enchanting blend of history and adventure in which Buck builds a wooden flatboat from the grand “flatboat era” of the 1800s and sails it down the Mississippi River....

In Rebellion, Ackroyd gives his dazzling account of the history of England, beginning the progress south of the Scottish king James VI, to flight and exile of his grandson James II....

The River of Doubt brings alive extraordinary events in a powerful nonfiction narrative thriller that happens to feature one of the most famous Americans who ever lived....

I Invented the Modern Age reclaims from history Henry Ford, the remarkable man who, indeed, invented the modern world as we know it....

A lively and engaging narrative history showing the common threads in the cultures that gave birth to our own....

Even after deciphering its hieroglyphs, and marveling at its scarabs, mummies, obelisks, and sphinxes, Egyptian civilization remains one of history's most mysterious....

The Emperor of All Maladies reveals the many faces of an iconic, shape-shifting disease that is the defining plague of our generation....

Here is the story of the men and women who fought against all odds to fulfill the 400-year-old dream of constructing an aquatic passageway between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans....

This audiobook version of As A Man Thinketh is true to the original....

Combining epic history with rich family stories, Michael Korda chronicles the outbreak of World War II and the great events that led to Dunkirk....

The Last Viking unravels the life of the man who stands head and shoulders above all those who raced to map the last corners of the world....

NASA's history is a familiar story, culminating with the agency successfully landing men on the moon in 1969. But NASA's prehistory is a rarely told tale....

When scholars study the history of the ancient Near East, several wars that had extremely brutal consequences (at least by modern standards) often stand out. Forced removal of entire populations, sieges that decimated entire cities, and wanton destruction of property were all tactics used by the various peoples of the ancient Near East against each other, but the Assyrians were the first people to make war a science. When the Assyrians are mentioned, images of war and brutality are among the first that come to mind, despite the fact that their culture prospered for nearly 2,000 years.

When England’s King Edward IV fell ill at Easter 1483 after coming back from a fishing trip and died shortly after on April 9, it threw a country that had already suffered a series of wars into a state of chaos. What exactly killed him is unclear, and though some people would later speculate that he had been poisoned, there is every reason to believe that he died of natural causes. Disease was common in medieval England, and doctors lacked much of the medical knowledge now taken for granted. 

One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the "Histories" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants.

One of the masterpieces of classical literature, the "Histories" describes how a small and quarrelsome band of Greek city states united to repel the might of the Persian empire. But while this epic struggle forms the core of his work, Herodotus' natural curiosity frequently gives rise to colorful digressions - a description of the natural wonders of Egypt; an account of European lake-dwellers; and far-fetched accounts of dog-headed men and gold-digging ants.

Originally published in 1915 in the middle of World War I, Carpenter explores the effects that the war was having on society and humankind as a whole from firsthand experience. In particular, papers focus on the differences between Germany and England, the causes of the war, and suggestions for restoration and recovery when the war has ended. Carpenter details all of this in a realistic way, drawing on matters such as class to put forward his anti-war stance as well as philosophical approaches to coping with tragedy. 

The conflict between the Israelis and Palestinians is technically over 70 years old and counting but has its roots in over 2,000 years of history. With so much time and history, the Middle East peace process has become laden with unique, politically sensitive concepts like the right of return, contiguous borders, secure borders, demilitarized zones, and security requirements, with players like the Quartet, Palestinian Authority, Fatah, Hamas, the Arab League and Israel.

A History of Water follows the interconnected lives of two men across the Renaissance globe. One of them—an aficionado of mermen and Ethiopian culture, an art collector, historian and expert on water-music—returns home from witnessing the birth of the modern age to die in a mysterious incident, apparently the victim of a grisly and curious murder. The other—a ruffian, vagabond and braggart, chased across the globe from Mozambique to Japan—ends up as the national poet of Portugal.

For the people of the ancient Mediterranean and beyond, the city of Rome had been a symbol of power for centuries, and entering the early 5th century CE, the Eternal City hadn’t been taken by an enemy force since the Gauls had done it about 800 years, an unheard of period of tranquility in a world wracked with almost constant warfare. Thus, when the Visigoths, whom the Romans considered uncultured and inferior, took the city of Rome and sacked it in 410, the world was stunned. It made theologians of the newly Christianized empire question God’s plan on Earth.

Amid all the foreign adventurers that throng to Nepal to scale the world's highest peaks, there exists a small tribe of mountain people at the foothills of Himalayas. Sherpa tells their story. It's the story of endeavour and survival at the roof of the world. The story dives into their culture and tells of their existence at the edge of life and death. It traces their story pre- and post-mountaineering revolution, their evolution as climbing crusaders with never previously published stories from the most notable and incredible Sherpas of the last 50 years. 

If you ask nearly anyone in the South what Sherman did during the Civil War, most people would say that he destroyed the Southern states, leaving ashes and bodies in his wake. Many would say that he burned Atlanta or Columbia. It's what we've been told for over 150 years! In this book, you will be guided through the historical record left behind by both sides of the argument. You will sift through the documents to determine whether you can trust the writers of the records. Did General Sherman really burn Columbia...or has he been the fall guy all along? 

During the course of a day we meet twenty-four Athenians from all strata of society—from the slave-girl to the councilman, the vase painter to the naval commander, the housewife to the hoplite—and get to know what the real Athens was like by spending an hour in their company. We encounter a different one of these characters every chapter, with each chapter forming an hour in the life of the ancient city. 

Athens presents one of the most recognizable and symbolically potent panoramas of any of the world's cities. It is hard not to feel the hand of history in such a place. The birthplace of democracy, Western philosophy and theatre, Athens' importance cannot be understated. From the reforms of the lawmaker Solon in the sixth century BCE to the travails of early twenty-first century Athens, as it struggles with the legacy of the economic crises of the 2000s, Clark brings the city's history to life, evoking its cultural richness and political resonance in this epic, kaleidoscopic history.

Until the early 1870s, very little was known about the creatures lurking in the depths of our oceans. The first systematic investigation into life in our oceans was made during the circumnavigation of the HMS Challenger. Scientists credit this voyage as the beginning of modern oceanography. In this book, Graham Bell takes listeners through the voyage station by station, following the progress of the expedition and introducing some of the new and strange animals that were hauled up from the depths of the ocean and seen by human eyes for the first time.

This is volume 3 of 27 in The American Nation: A History, edited by Albert Bushnell Hart, Professor of History at Harvard University. This volume begins with the detailed narrative of the founding and development of the communities now included within the United States of America, and the story necessarily goes back to the discovery of the American islands and continents. Professor Bourne in his earlier chapters summarizes and restates, with many original conclusions, the controverted points with regard to the discovery of America.

Sound interesting? The author thinks so too! Listen to Masterpiece in Creation and learn about history.